Resumes & Biographies
Engineering & Construction
Technical Experts
Long International’s Engineering & Construction Technical Experts have extensive knowledge of and experience in the design and construction of engineering and construction projects, and in particular process plant and industrial projects. Our experts have the qualifications to evaluate the adequacy of the Owner’s design requirements, specifications, and bid packages, and identify problems associated with ambiguities and conflicting requirements that could lead to delays in the engineering process, improperly specified equipment and materials, inadequate or unsafe equipment and materials installations requiring extensive inspections, and the need for costly change orders or rework to resolve such problems. In addition, our experts can evaluate the Contractor’s performance, engineering deliverables, and construction practices with respect to standards of care. During the project, we evaluate the technical entitlement of the Contractor’s change order requests to determine if the requested change is indeed a change in scope or part of the original contract requirements. Such analyses are central to determining the Contractor’s entitlement to large delay and disruption claims including claims associated with the cumulative impact of changes.
Our Engineering & Construction Technical analysis experience includes the following types of reviews, evaluations, and analyses:
- FEED Package Reviews
- Detailed EPC Contract Bid Package Reviews
- Engineering & Construction Specifications Reviews
- Change Order Technical Evaluations
- Engineering Standard of Care
- Construction Means and Methods
- Design Development Requirements
- Ambiguity of Contractual Requirements and Analysis of Contract Language to Identify Exculpatory Clauses and Risks
- Analysis of Welding Defects
- Process Engineering Analysis
- Defective Materials Analysis
- Equipment Specifications
- Punch List Evaluations
- Nonconformance Reports
- Contractor-Caused Performance Problems
- Over-Inspection
- Differing Site Conditions
- Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs)
- Process Flow Diagrams (PFDs)
- Safety Issues
- W. Tom Thweatt, Jr., Senior Principal
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Mr. Thweatt is a Senior Principal with Long International and has over 40 years of engineering, construction, and management consulting experience. He has extensive experience in major U.S. and international refining, chemical, petrochemical, pipeline, infrastructure, and thermal/ hydroelectric power generation projects ranging from $40 million to $12 billion. He has worked extensively in projects that were executed by multi-national joint ventures on both the owner's and the contractor's sides. Mr. Thweatt has served on Joint Venture and Consortium Executive Committees and has participated directly in claims negotiations and settlement agreements in excess of $100 million.
Before joining Long International, Mr. Thweatt served as Vice President and Director of Engineering for Techint, S.A., a major EPC contractor based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He served as a member of the Techint Comite Direccion, the governing committee responsible for all strategic and operational decisions, and was in responsible charge of worldwide engineering operations for all proposals and projects.
Before relocating to South America, Mr. Thweatt served as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Operations, for the Parsons Energy and Chemicals Group Inc., based in Houston, Texas. He had profit and loss responsibility for engineering, procurement, construction, estimating and project controls for all proposals and projects executed by the company's four major operating centers in Houston, Texas; Reading, Pennsylvania; Pasadena, California; and London, England.
Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Richard J. Long, P.E., P.Eng., Founder and
Chief Executive Officer -
Richard J. Long, P.E., P.Eng, is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of
Long International, a Colorado-based construction claims and project management consulting firm that focuses its practice on owners, engineering and construction firms, and contractors performing petroleum refining, petrochemical, oil and gas, power/cogeneration, mineral processing, industrial, building, and infrastructure projects worldwide. Mr. Long has over 40 years of U.S. and international consulting experience involving construction contract disputes analysis and resolution, arbitration/litigation support and expert testimony, project management, engineering/construction management, cost and schedule control, and process engineering. As an internationally recognized expert in the analysis and resolution of complex construction disputes for over 30 years, Mr. Long has served as the lead expert on over 300 projects having claims ranging in size from US$100,000 to over US$2 billion. His project experience includes refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants, offshore oil & gas facilities, power plants, oil sands and oil shale facilities, and commercial and industrial buildings. He has testified in court as well as U.S. and international arbitration. Mr. Long has presented and published numerous articles on the subjects of claims analysis, entitlement issues, CPM schedule and damages analyses, cumulative impact claims, and claims prevention.
Before forming Long International, Mr. Long was Senior Vice President, Contract Administration for a major electrical and mechanical contractor. In this role, he had corporate-wide responsibility for technical management and oversight of the preparation and resolution of construction claims. In addition, he was responsible for the development, training, and implementation of project management policies and procedures to ensure that profit, cost, schedule, scope, quality, and safety objectives were achieved. Mr. Long also managed for thirteen years the construction claims practices of two large consulting firms. Prior to his consulting career, Mr. Long gained thirteen years of project management and process engineering experience on petroleum refining, oil shale, synfuels, mining and power generation projects with Tosco, Fluor, and Conoco. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Steven J. Bieniewicz, Senior Principal
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Steven J. Bieniewicz, a Senior Principal with Long International, has over 40 years experience in engineering, project management, project planning and scheduling, cost engineering, construction claims/dispute resolution, project performance audits, and corporate management. He has over 25 years of construction claims and contract dispute resolution experience including issue entitlement evaluation, schedule delay analysis, damages analysis, attorney support, and expert witness testimony on a large number of complex construction projects. Mr. Bieniewicz is recognized as an expert in the development of schedule delay and cost overrun analyses for construction projects. He has worked on over 100 claims ranging in size from US$50,000 to over US$100 million. Before joining Long International, Mr. Bieniewicz had been a Principal in four consulting companies that focused on construction claims and project management.
Prior to entering the consulting field, Mr. Bieniewicz had direct experience on a number of construction projects including nuclear and fossil power plants, wastewater treatment plants, hospitals, and commercial buildings. As a Senior Project Manager for a contractor, he had complete management responsibility for several projects including hospitals and commercial buildings. As a Planning and Scheduling Engineer, he developed and maintained project schedules on a wide variety of projects. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - James E. Kelley, Jr., P.E., Senior Principal
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James E. Kelley, Jr. is a Senior Principal with Long International and has over 40 years of experience in the construction industry, both in field construction assignments and in consulting roles. Over the last 30 years, Mr. Kelley has developed a substantial expertise on highway, tunneling, and bridge construction projects in the determination and allocation of construction delay/impact damages, analyses of highly complex cause/effect relationships and the determination of root causes of problems, and the systematic interpretation of defectively intertwined contractual terms and conditions. In addition, on several occasions he planned and directed the organization of computerized litigation support databases involving millions of documents providing for both the efficiency of data input and the effectiveness of the final product.
As a consultant, Mr. Kelley has assisted clients in over 375 engagements. His clients have included construction contractors and subcontractors, design professionals, private and public (federal, state, and local) owners of construction, real estate developers, mining company owners/operators, manufacturers, insurance and surety companies, utilities, attorneys, and financial institutions. Mr. Kelley’s services have included construction arbitration and litigation support (including expert testimony), construction planning, program/project management advisory services, operations/organizational analyses and performance/ productivity enhancement, and strategic planning. His consulting engagements have originated throughout the United States and in several foreign countries. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Robert J. Lane, Senior Principal
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Mr. Lane, a Senior Principal for Long International, has over 40 years of experience working in or consulting for the engineering and construction industry. More than half of this time has been involved in the resolution of construction-related claims and disputes. He has expertise in project-related estimating, cost control and scheduling, retrospective schedule analysis, productivity analyses, and quantum/damages analyses. Mr. Lane has also worked in the areas of contract administration, claims management, and overall project and construction management.
He has utilized his expertise on major construction projects in the U.S. (Lower 48 and Alaska) as well as in international locations such as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Trinidad, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Algeria, and Nigeria.
Mr. Lane’s construction claims and property damage and business interruption experience includes refineries, gas plants, pipelines, storage facilities, petrochemical plants, offshore platforms, other offshore oil & gas facilities, power plants, transportation projects, and commercial and industrial buildings. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - S. Andrew McIntosh, Senior Principal
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S. Andrew McIntosh is a Senior Principal with Long International and has over 45 years of engineering, construction, onshore and offshore oil & gas operations and management consulting experience. He has extensive international greenfield and brownfield project development and execution experience in diverse areas such as refinery, petrochemical, offshore oil & gas, LNG, oil & gas pipelines, and ferrous metallics projects ranging from US$20 million to US$1.8 billion.
Before joining Long International, Mr. McIntosh served as President of The Natural Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago. He also served as a Senior Operations Advisor, Vice President – Operations, and Vice President – Technical Services for several international energy companies.
Mr. McIntosh has extensive experience in the development of Project Management and Project Execution Plans and Procedures, Stage-Gate processes for Project Development, and the analysis and resolution of engineering and construction claims involving disputed change orders, schedule delay, and loss of productivity claims. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Philip R. Moncrief, P.E. P.Eng., Senior Principal
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Philip R. Moncrief, P.E., P.Eng., a Senior Principal with Long International, has over 40 years of U.S. and international consulting experience involving engineering and construction, contract disputes, project management, project development, engineering/construction management, and process engineering. As an internationally recognized expert in the engineering and construction industry, he has managed large projects and had profit and loss responsibility for the engineering and construction operations of four major engineering-construction companies. He has published two books and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Colorado and Texas A&M University in their Construction Management Programs, and is a frequent presenter of project management topics to industry forums and seminars.
Before associating with Long International, Mr. Moncrief was Senior Vice President and General Manager of CDI Engineering Solutions’ Houston office, Vice President and General Manager of Technip’s Houston office, Vice President Project Management for Bechtel, Senior Vice President of Davy McKee and Vice President of Fluor Corporation. In these roles, he had responsibility for management and oversight of engineering and construction projects in the US and internationally including the development and implementation of project management policies and procedures to ensure that profit, cost, schedule, scope, quality, and safety objectives were achieved.
Mr. Moncrief is a graduate of Rice University with a Masters in Chemical Engineering. He has wide experience in the Refining, Petrochemical, Chemical, Pipeline, Terminals, LNG and other areas including treatment of waste from the facilities. His knowledge and experience includes process design, overall facility design, project management, project engineering, procurement of materials and equipment and construction of numerous facilities thorough out the world. His experience with these projects includes conceptual development, estimating of project cost, economic analysis, scheduling, contracts, marketing, and all areas of facility management and operations. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Peter van der Schans, Senior Principal
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Peter van der Schans, a Senior Principal with Long International, has over 40 years of project management, engineering management, and engineering experience. His extensive international experience includes the overall responsibility for engineering, project control, procurement, construction, and start-up of oil refining, oil and gas, gas to liquids, petrochemical, chemical, industrial facilities, municipal and refinery hazardous waste processing, and environmental projects. His experience covers all project phases from feasibility studies, preparation of FEED packages, EP and EPC project execution to start-up and operational troubleshooting. He has extensive experience in execution of refinery and petrochemical plant projects. He has analyzed delay, cost overrun, and lost production claims for refinery, offshore, and petrochemical plants.
Mr. van der Schans has experience in detailed commissioning planning of refineries, and mechanical completion and handover efforts, and has extensive commissioning and start-up experience. He also resolved many warranty claims to the satisfaction of the owner and contractor by technical and operational analysis of damages. He participated in many HAZID and HAZOP reviews, and functioned as HAZOP Chairman. He was an expert witness in a large reactor damage claim, and was a Process Consultant for FPSO conversions. He participated in contract negotiations with Contractors for US $50 to $450 million contracts on behalf of the owner.
Before joining Long International, Mr. van der Schans served as Senior Project Manager with Parsons E&C for 5 years, primarily as a leader of Project Management Consulting Teams and as individual Project Management Advisor for Middle Eastern Refiners and Oil Producers. He also served 23 years with Badger and Raytheon Engineers and Constructors as a Process Engineer, Technical Services and Start-up Engineer, Project Engineer, Project Engineering Manager, and Project and Sr. Project Manager. He started his career with Selas of America in process design, engineering, and start-up of Hydrogen, Ammonia and Methanol Syngas, and Olefins plants. He served as Director and Vice President of Engineering and Technology for Power Recovery Systems Inc., and as Director for Project Engineering Services GmbH. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Douglas A. Kage, P.E., Principal
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Mr. Kage, a Principal with Long International, is a Professional Engineer with over 30 years of experience in the areas of construction claims, project control, project management, construction management, and engineering design services. He has experience in schedule delay analysis, cost evaluation, entitlement analysis, calculation of damages, and brings extensive industry experience to the topics of industry practice and standard of care.
Mr. Kage has served as project manager for design projects and studies in the power generation and telecommunications industries. In addition, while serving in various senior project management capacities, Mr. Kage has had experience on several billion dollars of EPC project work, both domestic and international. During more than 14 years as a project control professional, Mr. Kage has managed the project control departments for two different businesses, supervising 40 project control professionals. He also developed an estimating department. He has managed the purchasing, warehousing, and distribution of millions of dollars of materials for construction projects and has managed a construction management field office. He has also had pivotal involvement in process improvement initiatives, re-engineering efforts, and quality improvement programs. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Truman D. King, P.E., Principal
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Truman D. King, P.E., a Principal with Long International, has over 35 years of experience in engineering, procurement, and construction operations in the mining, oil and gas, refining, and real estate development industries. He has successfully completed assignments in the U.S., Middle East and Europe. Mr. King was a Senior Project Manager for Worley Parsons, where he managed the Front End Engineering Design and acquisition of Process Design Technology for a $500 million expansion of an oil refinery in the UAE to produce clean diesel fuel. He has also managed oil & gas, refining, power distribution, marine, and other engineering projects and provided analysis and resolution of contractor's claims. Mr. King has extensive knowledge of the owner's and contractor's project management responsibilities on EPC turnkey projects. He has successfully analyzed claims involving mismanagement, defective engineering, delay, disruption, and disputed change orders. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - George E. Ted Brown, Senior Executive Consultant
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George E. Ted Brown is a Senior Executive Consultant with Long International. Mr. Brown has over 50 years of U.S. and international experience working with multiple owner companies, contractors, and major tier-one engineering, procurement and construction firms. He has managed projects costing more than US$5 billion. More recently, Mr. Brown spent 11 years as a senior consultant and advisor to two major oil companies. As a senior consultant and advisor, Mr. Brown provided broad, in-depth insight for major, mega, and giga project development and execution. Mr. Brown provides expertise regarding project and risk management when developing worldwide multi-billion-dollar projects.
Mr. Brown began his career as a field engineer and advanced to executive management overseeing complete fiscal and operational responsibility after he gained experience building and managing capital-intensive international projects. His experience spans oil sands mining, synthetic crude oil processing facilities, gas plants, pipelines, LNG terminal development, and on-shore and off-shore platforms. Mr. Brown has also advised and directed greenfield construction and brownfield improvements. At times, these projects occurred in remote, challenging environments. In these environments, Mr. Brown was tasked with project site selection, establishment of local infrastructure, including module installation, and labor development. His project experience spans master maintenance, turnarounds, engineering studies, pre-front end execution design (Pre-FEED), front end execution design (FEED), engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), engineering, procurement, construction management (EPCM) and construction. Mr. Brown also has overseen construction of manufacturing facilities including a liner board pulp mill, a vitamin manufacturing plant, and clean room facilities.
Notable among the projects he has managed is the largest project ever let at its time ($250M) by the New York State Department of Transportation for reconstruction of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway interchange with the Grand Central Parkway in Woodside, Queens, New York. He also managed the design and start of construction of a section of the $1B Air Train light rail service for JFK Airport in Jamaica, Queens, New York, a design-build project for the Port Authority. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - David E. Drips, Senior Executive Consultant
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David E. Drips is a Senior Executive Consultant with Long International and has over 40 years of experience in the mining and contracting industry as a miner, supervisor, engineer, project manager, general manager, president, and owner. Mr. Drips’ mine engineering, construction, and operating experience includes open pit, room and pillar (gassy and non-gassy), longhole stoping, cut and fill, shrinkage, undercut and fill, overhand open stoping, cut and fill resuing, and all phases of mine development which includes shafts, raises, track drifts, laterals, sloped developments and drop raises. His plant operating experience includes raw material management at cement plants, typical aggregate separation, hydrometallurgical plants with refineries, hydrometallurgical plants with Solvent Extraction/Electrowinning (SX/EW), differential flotation processing plants (one, two, and three products), and the operation of roasters for processing refractory ores. Mr. Drips has extensive experience in managing the turnaround of under-performing projects and distressed assets by utilizing in-house personnel for planning, design, and construction. He has successfully dealt with labor unions in the United States, Mexico, Honduras, and Venezuela. His engineering experience includes underground and surface mine design, process plant design, process circuit development, facility power design and tailing impoundment design. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Peter F. Franco, P.E., Senior Executive Consultant
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Peter F. Franco, P.E., is a Senior Executive Consultant with Long International and has over 40 years of experience on large international projects ranging in size from US $100,000 to over US $1 billion. He is a heavy civil engineering and construction professional recognized for his expertise in project management and corporate strategy. He performs standard of care analyses, constructability reviews, contract issue resolution, claims management, dispute resolution, corporate strategy development, and business process improvement services.
Mr. Franco has provided claims management on behalf of a government agency contractor, in which he developed and presented multiple ($10M+) claims for compensation and compensable time extensions. His efforts positioned the client for favorable monetary settlements by presenting articulate and compelling arguments that forced the owner to negotiate, rather than continue its practice of summarily rejecting claims.
During his prior employment with a global heavy civil construction company, he leveraged his experience with profitably managing numerous transportation and infrastructure projects to serve as director of corporate strategy and business process improvement. He spearheaded numerous corporate improvement projects, including: implementation of a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system; development of governance, risk management and compliance models; and implementation of workable corporate policies and processes to manage projects and control risk.
Notable among the projects he has managed is the largest project ever let at its time ($250M) by the New York State Department of Transportation for reconstruction of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway interchange with the Grand Central Parkway in Woodside, Queens, New York. He also managed the design and start of construction of a section of the $1B Air Train light rail service for JFK Airport in Jamaica, Queens, New York, a design-build project for the Port Authority. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Steven W. Laskey, P.E., Senior Executive Consultant
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Steven W. Laskey, P.E., a Senior Executive Consultant with Long International, has more than 40 years of experience in the U.S. and Australia. Mr. Laskey has served as lead technical expert on more than 10 arbitration/litigation matters related to the duty of the engineer and design professional, construction contractor standard of care, construction claims, and equipment failures in oil & gas. His project experience includes refineries, oil & gas facilities, natural gas processing and conditioning plants, chemical plants, coal seam gas gathering and facilities, and commercial and residential buildings. He has testified in federal and state district courts.
Before joining Long International, Mr. Laskey was a Process Engineer, Field Construction Engineer, Project Engineer, and Project Manager for both a large domestic architectural and engineering firm and a major international engineering and construction company. As a Project Manager, he was responsible for all aspects of facility estimating, preparation and control of budgets and schedules, engineering, design, procurement, and construction. He has managed projects in the Unites States and Australia, where he resided in Brisbane, Queensland. Early in his career, he was an Operations Engineer and Measurement Engineer for the upstream subsidiary of a major U.S. oil company. Mr. Laskey relies on his experience in operations and the management of Engineering, Procurement, and Construction projects to perform financial analysis, delay analysis, causation and damages analysis, write expert reports, and testify for parties in litigation.
Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Sean P. Pellegrino, P.E., Senior Executive Consultant
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Mr. Pellegrino is a Senior Executive Consultant with Long International and has more than 35 years of experience in all aspects of engineering, project management, project planning and execution, and project management consulting for onshore and offshore oil and gas projects. Mr. Pellegrino’s extensive and varied professional project experience in the oil and gas industry includes responsibilities for the full project life cycle. Mr. Pellegrino has supported, managed, and consulted on some of the oil and gas industry’s largest, most complex projects. His responsibilities and experiences include conceptual business case assessment, planning, contract development and award, execution, administration, commissioning and startup and close out of projects. His project experiences include onshore/offshore, upstream/downstream, and domestic/international projects with increasing size and complexity. Project scopes ranged from multi million dollar domestic projects to the multi billion dollar international projects. Mr. Pellegrino has worked extensively on international joint venture major capital projects from the owner’s side.
Mr. Pellegrino has extensive shipyard, fabrication yard, and construction site experience on projects. This experience includes managing and consulting with owner’s project teams and engineering and construction contractors’ project teams. His work experience includes both international onshore and offshore locations covering construction sites, shipyards, and fabrication yards all over the world and working with different cultures.
Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Michael J. Vallez, P.E., MBA, Lean Six Sigma
Senior Executive Consultant -
Mr. Vallez is a Senior Executive Consultant of Long International, a Colorado-based construction claims and project management consulting firm that focuses its practice on owners, engineering and construction firms, and contractors performing petroleum refining, petrochemical, oil and gas, power/cogeneration, mineral processing, industrial, building, and infrastructure projects. Mr. Vallez has over 40 years of hands on and leadership experience in project management, engineering/ construction management, cost and schedule control, change management, claims, dispute resolution, and mine and process engineering. He has served in executive management roles in industry, including both the owner and contractor sides with companies and contractors working on world-class projects for oil and gas companies, power companies, international mining companies, and other institutions. He has a proven ability to organize and integrate the work of multi-disciplined technical specialists and project construction teams to achieve corporate financial goals and objectives of ROI, safety, operational performance, cost, and time. In all, he has provided leadership on several billion dollars’ worth of projects in the Mining, Power, Oil and Gas, Industrial, Heavy Civil and Commercial sectors.
Mr. Vallez has written several books on the subjects of construction management, safety, and effective project leadership. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Garrett J. Brown, Executive Consultant
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Garrett J. Brown is an Executive Consultant for Long International and has 20 years of progressive work experience related to various aspects of engineering, procurement, and construction. Key work experience includes planning and team management, project cost and schedule controls, change order management (i.e., change order pricing and resolution), subcontract management, and arbitration/litigation experience related to construction claims. He also has experience in the development and implementation of process improvements to increase work flow efficiency in business units and projects. Mr. Brown has performed schedule delay and loss of productivity analyses, and has evaluated change orders for scope growth and project time and cost impacts. His project experience includes combined cycle power plants, oil refineries, petrochemical facilities, materials handling facilities, coke handling facilities, water storage facilities, and above ground storage tanks. Mr. Brown is proficient with the use of the scheduling programs Oracle Primavera Project Planner P6 and Primavera P3 3.1. He is well versed in the use of all Microsoft software products including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Visio, and Project. Other software experience includes SAP, Hard Dollar 12.1(Estimating and Cost Management), Crystal Xcelsius (SAP Presentation Design), ARIS Business Process Modeler, Acumen Fuse – CPM Schedule Forensics. Summary Resume Detailed Resume - Eric J. Klein, Ph.D., P.E., PMP, Executive Consultant
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Dr. Klein is an Executive Consultant with Long International, Inc. and has 18 years of industrial experience as a technical leader and project manager in engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), manufacturing, and research and development (R&D) environments. Dr. Klein is skilled in corporate leadership and has significant experience leading cross-functional teams to design, build, test, and start-up chemical processing systems in the power generation and semiconductor manufacturing industries. Dr. Klein possesses project management experience for multi-million-dollar capital projects including earned value management, risk management, contract and scope of work negotiation, technical project proposals, cost estimating, change control, request for information (RFI), change order management, design management and equipment procurement oversight. He has technical expertise in the generation of process-flow diagrams, piping and instrumentation diagrams, and equipment sizing and specifications. Prior to joining Long International, Dr. Klein held the positions of Chief Technology Officer, Vice President of Chemical Systems, Director of Chemical and Process Engineering, Staff Technologist and Senior Process Engineer.
Summary Resume Detailed Resume